The present application relates generally to an improved data processing apparatus and method and more specifically to mechanisms for providing rating aggregation and propagation for hierarchical services and products.
With the wide availability of products and services through electronic commerce platforms, with a large number of similar offerings to choose from, it has become important to accurately assess and evaluate the quality of the offerings. That is, given two similar services, for example, users find it important to be provided with information to assist them with deciding which service to select for their use. In order to provide such information, may providers of services and/or products have implemented a user/customer feedback mechanism by which the user/customer can provide information indicative of the user's perceived quality of the service or product. It has been found that users/customers trust such peer feedback much more than any vendor's marketing or advertisements since they believe the peer feedback helps them to make more informed decisions and obtain a best value for their investment of time and/or money.
On the other side, electronic commerce platforms and developers/sellers obtain such peer feedback information to assist them in improving the quality of their offerings. That is, by obtaining feedback from the users/customers as to where quality is lacking, the providers of the electronic commerce platforms may take action to modify the electronic commerce platform to improve the user/customer's experience interacting with the platform. With regard to developers/sellers of products/services, the developers/sellers may collect such peer feedback to improve quality of their products/services. Moreover, with the continuous move towards cloud services and application stores, peer feedback has become even more important as the offering providers need quick feedback through the development and operations process to improve their offerings at every iteration.